This article is written by Peevesie’s mom, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Blog Day :

3620

Post No. :

14427

16th June is the birthday of the disco dancer who had to struggle a lot in his career initially. But then “sabr’ ka phal meetha hota hai” and his stars changed after the success of B. Subhash’s “Disco Dancer” in 1982.

We are today wishing Gourang Chakraborty a.k.a Mithun Chakravarty on his 68th birthday.

He was a graduate from FTII and was the national award winner for his debut movie “Mrigaya” (1976) which was a Mrinal Sen direction. Then followed a spate of successful and semi-successful movies “Suraksha”, “Wardat”, “Wanted”, “Pyar Jhukta Nahi”, “Prem Vivah” etc. The last 2 named showcased him in characters that were diametrically opposite to what he played in the action-packed “Suraksha”, “Wardat” (a sequel to Suraksha) & “Wanted”. All these movies made him dear to those producers who couldn’t afford big stars like Amitabh Bachchan etc., as most of his successful movies were low-budget films to start off but in raked in the moolah at the Box-Office and that is what matters in the final analysis. The success of “Disco Dancer” went on to endorse his style of acting and dancing and youngsters copy his style to this day. He must have done close to 100 movies in the 90s itself in spite of it being the period when the Khans were on their upward movement. The turn of the millennium saw him in supporting roles that were comic, villainous, benevolent etc.

Rohit Shetty’s “Golmaal 3” had him re-visiting his “Disco Dancer” where he danced the song that made him popular. It was re-recorded and reshot with a few changes- the original was a stage song; this one was in a discotheque. And after the song we have a typical Indian film scene where the heroines’ rich father asks him to forget the girl in exchange for money & the self-respecting (swabhimaani) hero refuses to take the money. All-in-all a hilarious tribute to everything that Bollywood and Indian movies showcase.

Todays’ song from “Disco Dancer” is sung by Vijay Benedict written by Anjaan and music is by Bappi Lahiri. Kamal and Suresh Bhatt were the choreographers for the movie. People say that this song changed Bappida’s fortunes. Also though there are many who will cry that this movie and its songs changed the face of Bollywood music. But I will not get into that debate here. Let us all just say Happy birthday Mithunda. 🙂